Whatever you do, never buy a ship if you won't have hardly any money left after it. You should only buy a ship if you will have hardly or no money left after it if the ship you buy has things that could make a lot of money being sold, and still make the ship prosper. One of the most critical things when buying a ship is wether or not you can modify it to meet the galactic safety needs.

NOTE: The above tip is usually majorly effective when buying warships. However, don't take this into consideration if you are new and are about to buy something like a scoutship.

Peace out!

I've found a combination of ships that works pretty well. After raking up credits with my lousy shuttle, I bought a scoutship, which I used to make contact with the Miranu. After gaining about 700,000 credits, I bought a Miranu Courier, which was very helpful (especially with its strength and feul supply of 15 jumps!). Then, I bought an Azdara (or is it an Arada) with its high shield recharge rate, which I used to destroy many renegades. Finally, I bought a Lazira, stocking it up with weapons and heading for the Voinians.

Sheesh!
I bought a scoutship and kept that until I had completed the Miranu missions, then used a miranu courier for a brief period of time, then I bought a Freight Courier and had that thing ALL through the voinian missions. Now I have a UE Cruiser and've stuck with that since.
I made a plugin that has an outfit that accelerates hyperspeed time to counter the ship's mass effects on jump time (I'm so stinky )

Aaahhh! I see that this tip is perhaps for attended to that I originally thought.

Could you rephrase that? intended/attended? I'm a bit confoozed

Do you have problems with Bounty Hunters? Does it seem like no matter what system you go to there is
always a Crescent Warship waiting to kill you? Well, then I have your solution! Get whatever ship you want,
and six escorts. Run a trade route until you have enough cash to get six Miranu heavy freighters. Then
use those for the following trade route:
By worms at Pax in Dogover, and take them to Omm. There you can buy medical supplies and sell them on
Telnan in the Ariane system. On Telnan, after selling the med supplies, buy equipment and sell it on Pax.
Then start the whole thing over. You can make a lot of cash this way. Once you have 15million or so, and
it won't take that long, maybe an hour or two of running the route. OK, so that is a long time.
Anyway, then get the UE Cruiser missions and buy the cruiser when you've finished the missions. Now the
next time you see a Bounty Hunter, disable it, board it, and capture it w/o destroying the fighters. The
Cruiser can handle it easily. Use the Hunter as an escort, and you have a free, awesome escort. After
you've taken four or five Hunters, they won't show up anymore!

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-IondriveX